The Lonely Patch Of Ice
by brahdley jims
Summary: Rose Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy have a problem. Involving a patch of ice.  scorrose


**AN: **written for the 'One Line Starts It All' challenge by Flamingooooooooo on HPFC. ;) If the first line seems a little odd for a first line, well, it's because I had to use it as my first line :P Just light-hearted pointless stuff, really...

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><p>"Well, I get that, but –"<p>

"What do you get? To me it clearly seems like nothing, because if it wasn't we wouldn't be in this bloody mess!"

The recipient of this angry outburst was Scorpius Malfoy, who was very close at this moment in time to having his crown jewels hexed off by none other than Rose Weasley. The two were currently stranded in the middle of the Black Lake. On a solitary, floating patch of ice.

"No, I mean that I get that I shouldn't –"

He was cut off once again by the livid redheaded girl. "Shouldn't have done what you just did, Malfoy? Bravo, fifty bloody points to Slytherin! Next time you're standing on a frozen over lake, here's a little fact you might want to store in that half-dead brain of yours: you do not cast a heating spell at the ice and cause it all to melt!"

She was nearly screaming now. Scorpius winced, and a few moments passed with Rose glaring at him so intensely it was as if she was hoping to reduce him to a pile of ashes or burn a hole in the middle of his forehead. Then the blonde boy said, in a somewhat hopeful voice, "Well, at least I didn't melt _all _of it."

Rose's furious shriek could probably be heard in Australian Outback the next morning.

"Rose!" Scorpius exclaimed in disbelief, clutching his ears like they were about to fall off. Which they might have been. "What were you hoping to achieve from nearly destroying my eardrums?"

"I can't believe you, Malfoy!" Rose cried, crossing her arms tightly to her body for warmth. This did not make her look any less terrifying. "Even a Blast-Ended Skrewt would know not to cast a heating spell when we're surrounded by ice!"

"Well, Blast-Ended Skrewts can't do magic, so technically -"

The faint noise of grinding teeth made Scorpius shut up.

"The point is, we're stuck!" Rose declared, glaring at the landscape as if doing so would make a bridge suddenly appear, building a path from their lonely patch of ice in the middle of the freezing lake onto the Hogwarts grounds.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Scorpius muttered. Rose didn't hear him.

"And all because of you!" she continued, turning to glower at Scorpius again. "This is all your fault!"

"I'm sorry for coming out here and attempting to save your sorry arse!" Scorpius shot back. "Which I wouldn't have needed to do if your cousin hadn't dropped you all the way out in the middle of the frozen Black Lake!"

"James is an idiot! And I could have made it back on my own," she snapped.

"Really, being terrified of ice?" Scorpius raised an eyebrow.

"How did you know I'm scared of ice?" Rose asked gruffly, cross and embarrassed that he knew this.

"It was pretty obvious from the amount of screaming you were doing," Scorpius said bluntly. Rose scowled, but a smile tug at her lips. She recovered herself quickly, and her lips set in an angry line again.

"The point is," she repeated, as if Scorpius had said nothing about her being scared of ice, "we're stuck here until someone notices we're missing and comes to look for us, and it is your fault because you cast that heating spell!"

"I was trying to cast it at you to keep you warm!" Scorpius defended himself.

"Then you have a pretty bad aim! Where is your wand now, anyway?"

"I – " The blonde Slytherin patted down his pockets and glanced around. Where was his wand? Ah, there it was! … Floating five metres away from them in the lake.

"How did it get there?" Rose asked incredulously. Scorpius gave her a sheepish grin.

"Must have dropped it," he laughed nervously. He admitted it to himself: he was ever so slightly of afraid of another furious outburst from Rose Weasley. If someone ever asked him why, he decided his answer would always be, "You would be too."

He wasn't, thank Merlin, screamed at again. Instead, Rose threw up her arms like she'd completely given up all hope and exclaimed, "Brilliant! Brilliant! The Slytherin genius proves his worth as a human being again!" before locking her arms together again tightly.

Ignoring this, Scorpius noticed her arms hugging her body. "Are you cold? Do you want –"

"Do not cast another heating spell!"

Scorpius rolled his eyes. He didn't say anything, just shrugged off his jacket – even though all he had on now was a thin blue shirt – and draped it around Rose, stepping back before she had time to object.

"What was that for?" Rose questioned suspiciously.

"You were cold."

"And? I don't need your jacket to warm you up."

"Well, to put it bluntly, Weasley, you were going to freeze to death and I was being chivalrous. It doesn't mean anything so stop complaining." Scorpius could already feel goosebumps prickling on his arms, and tried to fold them without making it look like he was too cold.

Rose took a few seconds to consider her answer. Then she said, a little more softly, "Now you're going to freeze to death."

Scorpius felt a smile pulling at his lips, but forced it away. He wasn't giving in that easily. "Looks like it."

Rose stared at him. He shrugged, and smirked, "But then again, maybe I'm a lot tougher than you, silly weak Gryffindor."

The redhead huffed. Scorpius Malfoy was a git.

"Where's your wand, come to think of it?" Scorpius asked.

"I didn't bring it. I didn't think I'd need to for a snowball fight," Rose said delicately. She sighed when Scorpius smiled far too widely. Of course he wasn't going to let this go.

"So, you're just as bad as me!" he sang, grinning like a lunatic. "The Gryffindor know-it-all does have her faults and flaws!"

"Shut up," she hissed through gritted teeth, smacking him hard on the arm. He staggered backwards.

"Aaarghh! What was that for? Rosie, I thought we were so close!" he cried, clutching his arm and pretending to be horrified by what she'd just said. Rose's lip curled in disgust. What a sad excuse for a person he was.

"Will you bloody stop it?" she demanded, absently wrapping his jacket tighter around her. This didn't go unnoticed by Scorpius, who gave nothing away. "I can't believe I'm stuck here with you, of all people!"

"I'm not that bad," Scorpius pouted in mock hurt.

"And if this ice we're standing on now breaks –"

"I'll be able to swim us to safety," Scorpius said calmly. "You forget that as I am an exceptional Quidditch player, it stands to reason that I should be an outstanding swimmer. Anyway," he continued, arrogance aside, "The ice won't break. It's too strong."

Rose raised her eyebrows disbelievingly. "It wasn't strong enough for a heating spell. I doubt it's strong enough to hold the two of us for much longer."

"It was a strong heating spell!" Scorpius protested.

"And meanwhile, we're stuck here freezing until the ice breaks or someone comes to find us! We're almost certainly going to die, and I'm going to die with you! I'm going to die stuck on a patch of ice in the middle of a lake with Scorpius bloody Malfoy!"

And then, completely without warning, Rose Weasley burst into tears.

Scorpius' eyes widened, and he gulped. He wasn't good with crying girls. "Hey – erm, don't cry – Rose, please don't cry…" He put an arm around her shoulder, and when she didn't shrug him off, he wrapped both arms around her in a hug. To his surprise, not only did she not pull away, but she put both her arms around his waist and clung to him, crying into his chest. Scorpius, understandably, was speechless.

"Er – Rose?" he finally managed to ask, once he found his voice. "Are you OK now?"

"Y-yeah," she hiccupped, the sobbing subsiding at last. "I'm f-fine. I'm s-sorry." Rose reached up a hand to wipe her eyes, but when she found herself unable to, she suddenly realised where she was. And what she was doing. And abruptly pulled away, hoping her hair would cover the damned blush spreading across her face.

Not likely. Scorpius noticed her face growing very red, very fast, and had to hide a smirk. Rose folded her arms again and let out a shuddery sigh.

"This is so stupid," she muttered. "And embarrassing."

Scorpius raised an eyebrow, considering their situation. He was a trained wizard, and Rose was a talented witch, and yet here they were… floating in the middle of a lake on a patch of ice, with Scorpius' wand only a few metres away. They could _see_ the castle from here, were within walking distance of their warm common rooms, and yet they were stuck in the freezing cold outside, and nobody was in sight to help them. It was rather stupid, now he thought of it. And before he could stop himself, he'd burst out laughing.

"Scorpius!" Rose shrieked in disbelief. "What are you doing? What's so funny?"

"Sorry – it's just – it _is_ very stupid –" he wheezed, before bending double and clutching his stomach in another laughing fit.

"You're unbelievable," Rose huffed. Her lips betrayed her, trying to tug into smile as she resisted it. The result was her lips looking as if they twitching violently, which made Scorpius laugh harder. "Oh, stop it! Honestly."

"Sorry," he apologised again, finally managing to control himself. "But it was quite funny, Rose."

Silence. Scorpius sighed.

"Hey, Rose?"

"What?"

"You called me Scorpius."

"Huh?"

"Before. You called me Scorpius."

And without really knowing what he was doing or why he was doing it, Scorpius leant in and kissed her. Rose's eyes widened to an almost comical size, and before she knew it she was kissing him back, heart thumping wildly in her chest. What in Merlin's name had possessed Scorpius to do this? And why was she kissing him back? She had no idea, but frankly, she liked it.

Scorpius' hands went to rest tentatively on her waist. He smiled into the kiss when Rose responded by sliding her arms around his neck, and pulled her closer to him. Rose let out a little gasp, but Scorpius allowed her little time to breathe as he kissed her more fiercely, tangling his fingers unconsciously in her soft red curls. He couldn't believe this was happening much more than Rose could. Why hadn't he done this sooner? This was, for lack of a more inventive word, heaven. And though she knew it was a cliché phrase, Rose was quite certain that she's died and floated straight up there, because this was perfection. _He _was perfection.

And that was when the ice beneath their feet snapped in half.

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><p>please <strong><span>review<span>** :)


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